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Home Automation

For the last few weeks I’ve been playing with home automation. I first spent some time reviewing the different controllers which could be used. I really wanted one which was open source, or at least easily extendable and documented.

In the end I picked OpenHAB, which seems to satify all my needs. The configurations are a little overwelming to start with but when you dive into them they start to make sense. There are clients for IOS, andriod, as well as webUI for anything else.

The next issue was sensors and actuators. Quickly I found MySensors, which allows me to build any sensor I want using Arduino processors. These sensors are wireless and battery powered. Judging by the last few weeks on run time I can easily get several months on two AAA batteries, but could increase that by increasing the interval between measurements. I am currently taking a reading every 30 seconds.